Amazing Grace Keeps the Platters Spinning

Abstract

In this photo essay, we center Chicana radio and television broadcasting trailblazer Graciela Gil Olivarez who, with a microphone in hand, amplified Mexicana and Chicana voices and stories across the Southwest from 1951 to the mid-1960s and again in the 1980s. Olivarez bridged her broadcasting work with an impressive career in government organizations that made her the highest-ranking Latina during President Jimmy Carter’s term. Through a series of photographs of Olivarez’s life and career trajectory, we mark the place of the first woman disc jockey in Phoenix, Arizona, and later owner of her own Spanish-language television network, KLUZ, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as a key figure in Latina media histories. This photo essay mines the visual archive—photographs that span Olivarez’s early career in radio and television broadcasting and subsequent political work—in order to establish how Chicanas innovated media production to center their voices and narratives.